Helium plant helps plains town's economy balloon

ERIC HUBLER - The Denver Post

CHEYENNE WELLS, Colo. - Some towns have casinos. This one has
helium. Make light if you will, but the lighter-than-air gas is an
important resource, with uses including medical imaging and rocket
propulsion. Thanks to the Ladder Creek Helium Plant in this Eastern
Plains town about 200 miles southeast of Denver, Colorado is helium
country.

"I'm proud," said Brenda Garrison, principal of the Cheyenne
Wells Pre-K-8 School, which opened in January 2003.

Taxes paid by Ladder Creek's owner, North Carolina-based Duke
Energy, help pay for city services.

Helium is the second most plentiful element in the universe; the
ground beneath your feet may be making some right now. But it's so
light it usually floats into space, said Scott Cowley, associate
professor of applied chemistry at Colorado School of Mines in
Golden.

That's where Ladder Creek comes in, capturing and condensing
enough helium to be usable. The plant actually refines more natural
gas than helium, but "helium is what is unique about this
facility," said plant supervisor Stephen M. Cochran.

Helium, which is about five times the price of natural gas, is
often called a byproduct of natural gas, but that's not quite
right. Gas is decayed organisms, and helium is decayed radioactive
matter that originates deeper than gas, Cowley said. They percolate
to the surface together, but the helium content varies hugely.

Gas in the earth around Cheyenne Wells is 3 to 5 percent helium.
The gas in a much bigger field in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas has
one-tenth of that.

Why are some places more helium-prone than others?

"You'd have to ask God that, I suppose," said Dennis Stell, the
Tulsa, Okla.-based managing director of Duke Energy Field
Services.

"Or the dinosaurs that lay down and died to create the
hydrocarbons," said Bill Cooper, a Duke asset manager whose
territory includes Ladder Creek.

Helium was first observed, indirectly, during a solar eclipse in
the 19th century, the School of Mines' Cowley said. By the early
20th century, scientists could isolate it by chilling air but at an
absurd cost: $1,500 per cubic foot.

Then cCowley said.

Figuring today's price isn't easy, said Duke's Stell. All 120
million cubic feet of helium that Ladder Creek produces annually is
resold under a long-term contract by Praxair Technology Inc., a
Connecticut gas provider. Stell wouldn't reveal the terms of the
contract.

The helium market is small enough that there are no exchange
listings for it, but in recent years helium has changed hands at 2
cents to a bit over 5 cents per cubic foot, Stell said. Demand is
rising 6 to 8 percent a year as more uses are found, but supplies
are tightening along with those of natural gas.

Helium pricing is further complicated because the federal
government decided helium was a vital national asset in the 1920s
and began hoarding it in 1962 in a 20-square-mile natural dome
3,500 feet beneath a mesquite field in Amarillo, Texas. A top layer
of anhydrite keeps 32 billion cubic feet of helium snug in porous
dolomite.

The place is called Bush Dome. "No relation (to the president),"
said Tim Spisak, Amarillo field office manager for the Bureau of
Land Management.

The government holds periodic sales designed to draw down its
reserve without destroying private markets.

There were 24 privately owned helium plants in the U.S. in 2002,
according to the BLM. Private helium production totaled 3 billion
cubic feet worth $285 million in 2003, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.

The only other helium-producing nations are Algeria, Poland and
Russia.

Helium is a happy gas, said Cowley, meaning each atom has all
the electrons it needs and never bonds with anything else. Oxygen,
by contrast, bonds with other atoms - hydrogen, for example, to
create water.

That's why Goodyear's famous promotional and naval-surveillance
blimps never exploded like the Hindenburg: unlike hydrogen, helium
can't burn. (The Nazis wanted helium for their airships, but the
U.S. wouldn't sell it to them, Spisak said.)

Helium's inability to bond also explains its industrial uses. It
can, for example, be used as a "shielding gas" to keep air away
from metals being used to create an alloy. Regular air could
contaminate the metals, but in an artificial atmosphere of inert
helium, the metals have nothing but each other to stick to.

Crystals for semiconductors also are grown in helium.

Ladder Creek gets some of its gas from local wells and some by
pipeline from Kansas. One by one, various components are removed -
carbon dioxide, propane, butane, methane and more - until crude
helium, 70 percent helium and 20 percent nitrogen, is left.

Then the real magic happens. If helium atoms can be slowed
enough, they'll turn into a liquid that is denser and thus cheaper
to ship than gas. And only liquid helium can be used in magnetic
resonance imaging.

Ladder Creek is among only nine plants that can liquefy
helium.

At first glance Cheyenne Wells, which was named for a watering
hole, has that teetering-on-the-brink look typical of former stage
stops. But thanks to the helium plant, plus nearby oil and gas
drilling, it's laden with lush lawns, Cadillacs under carports, a
public golf course and a cappuccino bar.

The hotel, once an oilmen's flophouse, now boasts an
aromatherapy room.

Ladder Creek isn't a big employer; thanks to computerized
sensors, the 13-acre complex is run by six people. Its entire
payroll is 12.

"We're very fortunate that Duke's here," said Shirley Pedersen,
deputy Cheyenne County treasurer.

While locals said the plant is not an intrusive presence, Duke
does like to make residents aware of their town's unique role in
the world economy. Staffers have run helium-education booths at the
county fair. Adults may tour the plant, and Tami Brown, an
administrative assistant at the plant and a school board member,
does a helium road show for students.

Because helium is too cold to handle, Brown uses liquid nitrogen
to show what happens when things get amazingly cold. Her wilting
balloons and shattering fruit are popular.

She also explains why inhaling helium makes people talk funny -
it distorts sound waves - and why they should not do it.

That kind of outreach could help preserve a community that, like
many plains towns, is losing young people.

"We're hoping it brought to the kids' attention the fact that
there are jobs relating to science here," said fifth-grade teacher
Debbie Shivers.

While it's impossible to tell which helium atoms end up where,
patients receiving MRIs, golfers swinging titanium clubs,
astronauts building the international space station and divers
using scuba tanks all may have Cheyenne Wells to thank.

Said school principal Garrison: "I always tell people, 'When you
look at the balloons at your birthday party or bar mitzvah or
something, think of Cheyenne Wells."'